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Shrimp Sauce

A sauce made by boiling fish velouté or béchamel, adding cream and fish fumet, reducing, then stirring in shrimp butter and shrimp tails.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Cream and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 8% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 41,516 recipes. Both carry delta-dodecalactone, which smells sweet, creamy. The science ↓

Shrimp Sauce

Ingredients

Directions

  1. Boil the fish velouté or béchamel sauce.

  2. Add the cream and clear fish fumet.

  3. Reduce the mixture to 1 pint.

  4. Remove from heat and stir in the shrimp butter and shelled shrimp tails.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cream + buttertop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together41,516 recipes

    Shared aroma: delta-dodecalactone (sweet, creamy).

  2. Shrimp + buttertop 11% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,931 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,6-nonadienal (cucumber, green).

  3. Fish + buttertop 12% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,488 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  4. Fish + shrimptop 13% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together252 recipes

    Shared aroma: (z)-4-heptenal (biscuit, cream).

  5. Cream + shrimptop 21% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together1,067 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-one (mushroom, metallic).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Fish velouté or béchamel sauce
Provides the thick, smooth base that the other ingredients are added to.
Cream
Adds richness and a silky texture to the sauce.
Clear fish fumet
Adds savory seafood flavor and liquid to thin and season the base.
Shrimp butter
Adds concentrated shrimp flavor and richness to the finished sauce.
Shelled shrimp tails
Adds shrimp flavor and a tender bite to the sauce.

The step that matters

Removing the sauce from heat before stirring in the shrimp butter and shrimp tails. Butter can separate and turn greasy if it is overheated, and shrimp become rubbery when cooked too long. Residual heat from the sauce is usually enough to warm the shrimp gently and keep the butter emulsified.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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